Several years ago I remember when my boss at the time, Chris Brooks, and others at work set up and ran Terrarium, a .NET v1.0 app that allowed peer-to-peer networking of machines running code with "bugs" (not the defect kind) in a virtual environment. It was a sort of a survival-of-the-fittest-bug kind of game, and they used it at work to build some fun learning into the process.

Fast-forward a few years, and the team at Microsoft that originally built the Terrarium app has scattered to the wind. But Bill Simser, a solutions architect, avid .NET guy and Microsoft MVP for SharePoint, took the initiative to find the code inside Microsoft, update it to .NET v2.0, and released it on CodePlex for the community to use and help maintain.

It's now a client-server application and has a worldwide-participation capability (as well as single-machine and closed local peering capabilities). Pretty cool stuff.

If you're an individual, team or group that wants to get some practice or learn more about programming in .NET and you want to have some fun in the process, check out Terrarium v2.

Resources:

• Bill Simser's blog post about Terrarium v2
• Terrarium v2 on CodePlex

There's some great news out of the Microsoft Xbox crew at the E3 conference - NetFlix integration with your XBox 360:

Microsoft revealed that beginning later this year, Netflix subscribers would gain access to the entire Netflix digital library through their online XBox 360's.  Gold membership is required to take advantage of this partnership, but the newfound capacity represents a large step forward in increasing the XBox 360's appeal as a living room media box.  The present Netflix digital library includes roughly 10,000 titles, and on the 360 will feature the ability for watching videos concurrently with friends over the Internet through the new community party system.

Xbox 360 will be the only game system that lets users instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix. Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to streaming movies and television show episodes from Netflix at no additional cost. I'm really looking forward to that. All we need now is a Blu-Ray drive for the 360 console...

Also announced was a revamped user experience and interface (implemented completely through software updates, and allowing more personalization and social interactivity), new HD programming partners and content (including Battlestar Galactica, which I am looking forward to), a price cut on the "Pro" model of the Xbox 360 and a new model slated for August, a future feature which will allow you to copy your game disk to the Xbox hard drive for faster loading and smoother play (you still need to have the original disc though), and a bunch of new games.

On TechCrunch IT, in a post called "The New Apple Walled Garden," author Nik Cubrilovic makes a good point...

TechCrunchIT » The New Apple Walled Garden

Geeks and enthusiasts wearing Wordpress t-shirts, using laptops covered in Data Portability, Microformats and RSS stickers lined up enthusiastically on Friday to purchase a device that is completely proprietary, controlled and wrapped in DRM. The irony was lost on some as they ran home, docked their new devices into a proprietary media player and downloaded closed source applications wrapped in DRM.

I am referring to the new iPhone - and the new Apple iPhone SDK that allows developers to build ‘native’ applications. The announcement was greeted with a web-wide standing ovation, especially from the developer community. The same community who demand all from Microsoft, feel gifted and special when Apple give them an inch of rope. When Microsoft introduced DRM into Media Player it was bad bad bad - and it wasn’t even mandatory, it simply allowed content owners a way to distribute and sell content from anywhere.

How can people who preach and pontificate open systems be so enamored with a completely closed, proprietary system as Apple's? Now, don't get me wrong. I was in line at an Apple store last week with all the people Nik talks about in his article. I really like the iPhone and I think my Mac is great, hardware-wise (okay, the OS is not too bad either). But there's something that's always lurking there in the back of my mind, like a pestering little voice that doesn't want me to give in or forget lessons of the past. "A closed system is a system doomed to fail," the voice tells me. Either that, or it is so limiting as to stifle. Or both. Maybe I need to get my medication checked. On the other hand, maybe the voice is right. Or both.

Risking cliche cynicism, I think one has to consider whether The Church of The Steve congregation is further developing (or devolving, if you prefer) in its adoration, at the expense of long-term good. Blind faith, crazed unthinking people saying one thing yet doing another, the how-dare-you-question mentality... Sounds familiar. And that's coming from an Episcopalian. An imperfect, sometimes-questioning, sometimes-doubting, cynical one -- But you get the point. I hope.

Perhaps the scariest part of my thought process today is that I actually agree completely with Dave Winer on this one. He nails it right on the head. Okay, there are times when I agree with Dave, but until now I've never really admitted it in public. :)

What do you think about Apple's model? Fanboy? Concerned? Who cares? End of the world as we know it? Utopia? Told-ya-so?

You can spend literally minutes (many of them) watching Gary Busey comment on various aspects of business and entrepreneurialism, and laughing in the process. Awesome. Highly recommended, since Gary is one of my favorites. You can click the buttons at the bottom of the video screen to get to different sections, each with several "episodes."

And by the way, the gotvmail service this video series is meant to virally market is pretty great, too. You might want to check that service out if you need a more-formal call-handling system for your smaller-sized business but don't want to shell out the money to buy all the classic PBX hardware. Great for distributed teams and virtual offices, too.

I know this isn't exactly a new thing, but as I was installing the IE8 Beta 1 for x64 architecture on a computer today to do some testing, I felt a warm-fuzzy sense of appreciation for the fact that more and more we are seeing software that checks for patches and updates before installing and running for the first time. It makes for more-secure system, which is nothing but good.

No matter what you think of Internet Explorer (and for the record/what it's worth, I like it quite a bit these days), you have to admit the safer installation process is a great improvement.